Pale Moonlight
by CaptainAmberRose
Summary: AU Fic written for the Death Scene Challenge by KatDucat. After death, Peter Pettigrew has a strange encounter with someone unexpected.


**Hi again! Goodness I've been busy today :) This was written for the Death Scene challenge by KatDucat. Hope she (and you) enjoy this.**

**Please Review! It's a little obscure but this is what I've created from the characters I was given :)**

He was tied to this house – he was sure of it. As if some force kept him bound to it. He'd lived here for so very many years. Fed, watered, safe.

So why had he now ended up here? Upon reaching consciousness, he'd expected darkness. And the pain he so rightly deserved, but for what seemed like years, he'd been staring into blackness. Warm, solid darkness that seemed to stretch around him like a blanket.

He had done nothing to deserve warmth.

Finally, he summoned the will to move. To open his eyes and meet his fate. And he had found himself here. Twelve years, he'd spent here. In all honesty, it was the only home he'd ever had. Only child of a lonely single mother, his "special gifts" had singled him out for ruthless torment at muggle primary school. His poor mother had tried so hard to protect him from the world, but had been denied the chance to see him become a wizard.

The Burrow. With the wonderful Molly Weasley. She was kind, gentle and didn't grip his ribs in a vice like that blithering twit Percy. She always kept a pouch of sunflower seeds in the left pocket on her apron. He hated sunflower seeds, but the average domestic garden rat didn't exactly go around eating sausage casserole.

The youngest Weasley boy had been a fairly good master, far better than Percy. He didn't subject him to mind numbing lectures or bitterly bemoan his apparently terrible life. With Ron, he'd had far more freedom than under his older brother's watch. The boy had been kind, if a little impatient, and a welcome, if slight lazy companion.

Nevertheless, this return to the Burrow was a perplexing change of circumstances. The house still looked the same, as if not a single thing had moved since the fateful day he'd left.

With the supplementary addition that he was dead, of course. Dead, somewhat transparent and completely, utterly substance-less. Was he a ghost?

He glanced at his hands, watching in utter bewilderment as the sun glistened straight through them, blinding him despite his attempts to shield his eyes. He drifted down the familiar, rickety stairs, marvelling at the house around him. The matriarch of the Weasley family stood in the open doorway, back to him as she talked with an exhausted brunette with a tiny red headed boy and a slightly taller girl with thick red curls.

Realisation came to him in an instant. The girl was Granger, Potter's friend. The two children must be Ron's. A boy and a girl. So much time had passed.

Molly turned in the doorway, a child in each hand. Startled, he made no move, curious if they could see him. Molly swept straight through him, and in a second both disappointment and relief swept through him.

As she ushered both children into the kitchen, the small girl craned her neck around and stared at him for one long second. She smiled.

Later that evening after the children had been put to bed, and even the irrepressible Molly Weasley had succumbed to sleep, he found himself sitting on the top step of the stairs, musing as to why the fates had left him here of all places.

Surely if he was to haunt anywhere or anyone, it would have been Potter. If it was penance the gods were after, why not send him to the place he had done the most harm? It made no sense and it infuriated him.

The floorboards creaked behind him and he almost jumped straight out of his wits as he found himself staring straight into the freckled face of the Molly Weasley's granddaughter.

Frozen and speechless, he sat there as she pattered around him with tiny slippered feet, a blanket clutched in one hand. She gazed at him, without fear, as only a child would be capable of.

"Who are you?" she whispered, apparently awestruck by the translucent figure slumped on the landing.

Unsure how to answer, he thought for a second.

"A very old friend of your dad." It wasn't strictly untrue.

"Oh." She looked pensive for a second. "My name's Rose. What's yours?"

He suppressed a smile at just how like Molly she was. Bold, forward and always to the point.

"Peter." He shook the little outstretched hand with a genuine smile.

"Will you be my friend? I haven't really got any friends. Mummy says they're jealous but I think they're just mean."

"Of course." He couldn't help himself but smile back as she beamed brightly at him.

"People weren't very nice to me at school either."

"I wish I could have a wand like Mummy's, but she says I have to wait until I'm older. I want to turn all the girls into slugs and stamp on them! Then I'll turn all the boys into pretty little bunny rabbits and dress them up and put make up on them! That'd teach them to mess with me!"

"I bet it would." He agreed, "So Rose, why are staying at your grandma's? Are you on holiday?"

She scowled instantly. "No. Mummy's very tired and Daddy is always out so grandma said she'd look after us for a week."

"Why is Mummy so tired?"

"She keeps having big arguments with Daddy. Nobody's very happy with Daddy at the moment."

So Ron and the Granger girl were having marital problems. Why did that not surprise him? The girl had been a little fireball, even at fourteen, and Ron had always been somewhat lazy and uncommunicative.

He tried to smile at the little girl, who wore a small, sad expression that nearly broke his heart.

"What about you? Are you happy with Daddy?"

"He used to read me bedtime stories but now he doesn't anymore. He always comes in very late at night. I hear him on the stairs but when I go to say hello, he always tells me to go back to bed." Her face crumpled. "I miss my Daddy."

"I never met my Daddy." He tells her, wondering at which point in the evening he started baring his soul.

"But who read you bedtime stories?" she asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

"My Mummy. But that's a story for another night. You should go back to sleep. You'll be tired in the morning." He told his new friend softly. It felt odd to have a real friend after so long, even if she was only about four or five.

"Only if you read me a story."

He debated internally before crumpling miserably before big, beseeching brown eyes.

"Ok. Do you promise you'll sleep though?"

"I promise." She whispered solemnly.

He followed her shuffling footsteps, watching her rifle through a small blue rucksack for a well worn, dog eared copy of _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_, which she deposited on the chair beside the bed.

She wriggled eagerly under the duvet and waited for him, snorting with laughter as he tried and failed to pick up the book, his fingers slipping straight through the chair.

"I'll hold it. You read it," she commanded, seizing the book and flipping it to the first page.

Dutifully he began to read, doing silly voices when commanded to by her royal highness. Her eyelids began to droop gradually as he reached the end of the story.

"And they all lived happily ever after." He finished, watching as the big eyes jolted back open to fix on him.

"Will I live happily ever after?" she enquired sleepily.

"Yes. You'll grow up to be a princess and you'll live a castle."

She beamed at him.

"You will come back won't you?" she asked, wide eyed and hopeful. "You're my only real friend."

Despite himself, he smiled, won over.

"Of Course. I'll be just out there."

"Good." Her eyelids drifted closed and she fell into a peaceful doze.

He tiptoed quietly back out, careful not to wake her.

Every night for the next three nights, they fell into a routine. Rose's home life seemed unhappy and lonely. He was both saddened and mildly surprised at the sort of man his old master had become. A lonely child himself, he found it easy to empathise with her, and they talked about school and home to great extents.

He regaled her with stories of Hogwarts and all the magical, wonderful things she'd see when she was older. She was enthralled, listening to him rapturously and asking enthusiastic questions.

"Do you think I'll have friends there?" she implored him.

"I'm sure you will. You'll be with people like you."

"Did you have friends there?"

His heart sunk. "Yes," he murmured, suddenly lost in memories of his second home. "Yes I did."

"Where did they go?" It was an innocent question as any and one he had no idea how to answer. They were all dead. One by his hand, another framed, all betrayed. He had asked himself why a million times and each time he was no closer to an answer.

"They're all dead now." He swallowed hard.

"All of them?" she looked confused.

"It was my fault." He clarified. "I betrayed one of my best friends and he died because of it. I lied about it to save myself."

"But...why?" she seemed more intrigued than disgusted.

With a heavy heart, he felt the need to explain himself. "A bad man wanted to kill my friend and he was going to kill me unless I told him where he was hiding. I was scared and I told him. I'm a coward." He choked back a sob, struggling to maintain his composure in front of the small girl.

"Would you do that to me?" Rose looked suddenly heartbroken and he desperately wanted to reassure her.

"No. I couldn't do that. I've learned from my mistakes. I won't be a coward anymore." He promised her, feeling relieved as she began to smile again.

Happily, she disappeared to retrieve her bedtime book, leaving him alone, staring up at the sky through the dusty window.

The final night before she left, he sat once again upon the top step, waiting for her. After an hour of waiting, he grew concerned, tiptoeing towards her room and opening the door as silently as possible, so as to not disturb the rest of the house.

The bed was empty. That alone sent a jolt of panic through his ectoplasmic body. But her rucksack was gone and all the clothes that had once lain haphazardly across her floor were all missing. He darted downstairs, glancing through every room in the house in a blind panic, actually thankful that his ghostly form could pass through walls.

Heart sinking, Peter slipped easily through the front door, scanning the Weasley grounds furiously. The moonlight was bright and the white light cast a glow across the landscape, illuminating a small figure sitting alone by one of the many pond-like marshy areas that scattered the grounds.

Relieved, he made his way over to her, careful not to startle her.

She looked deep in thought, even as she glanced across at him, an unusual, almost brooding expression on her small features. Her backpack lay beside her, a puffy coat on her back and tiny yellow mittens enveloping her hands.

"Rose, what are you doing?"he whispered urgently.

"I'm running away. If I run away, Mummy and Daddy will be so worried that they'll stop arguing and be nice to each other."

"You don't need to run away, Rose. Have you tried talking to Mummy about it?"

"No." She looked sad.

"Why don't you try that? You'll see her tomorrow. Why don't we go back inside? You'll catch a cold out here."

With a defeated sigh that looked unbearably out of place on such a small girl, Rose shrugged in agreement.

"I'll read you a bedtime story if you like."

Her face scrunched up. "I don't want a story. I want to go paddling." Her face lit up like a thousand candles as she kicked her legs eagerly, heels dipped in the clear water.

Uneasily, he gazed at the water. But he couldn't bear to see her look so miserable again.

"Only on the edge, mind." He warned her. "where it's not too deep."

"Ok." She beamed at him, clambering excitedly into the shallow pool, splashing around in delight.

He watched her fondly.

Excitedly she took another step forward into the gloom, rolling her eyes as he called out a warning.

With only an odd thudding where his heart used to be, he called out warily, imploring for her to come back.

She shot him a cheeky grin, sticking her tongue out as she took another step – another step into water much deeper than she'd expected. So deep that her foot didn't hit the bottom as she overbalanced.

He jerked forward, sliding into the icy water with an urgency he'd never felt before, forgetting that he no longer had a body as she thrashed and kicked, screaming and keening in her struggle to stay afloat. His arms passed straight through her as he desperately tried to haul her to safety, watching her gasp and flail her arms in a desperate spasm.

She dipped beneath the water for a second and he watched in agony as her eyes bulged, trying to scream his name as the water closed around her.

In helpless, horrified terror, he tried to reach her again and again, each time his fingers slipping straight through hers, her eyes fixed in abject terror.

Finally he could reach her no more and the ripples had ceased; his movements having no bearing on the water.

He drifted numb and empty to collapse upon the dry grass, sobbing as he held his head in his hands and imagining Molly's reaction as she found her granddaughter floating dead and lifeless in the cold, murky water.

He imagined Ron and his wife, broken and brought together at last in their grief – something which Rose had only talked about minutes ago.

The realisation that she was dead was impossible to sink in. He had left another friend to die, a feat he swore he'd never do again.

He felt like screaming, but no-one would hear and he wouldn't feel any better.

And so it was in utmost dismay and a horrible, cruel sense of relief that he turned to see a small ghostly pale face, freckled even in death.

Ectoplasmic just as he, Rose Weasley sat beside him and cried herself to sleep as they awaited the morning that would break so very many hearts.

**Thanks for reading :) Please Review! xx**


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